ANATOMICAL WORK. 23 



his youthfulness, but opened his mouth as the operator 

 entered the room, as if to say " Out with the rascal!" 

 When Goodsir's forceps had relieved him of his pos- 

 terior molar, the " Great Dan " had his joke at the loss 

 of a wisdom tooth, and the "repeal " of their union. 



Anatomy was Goodsir's hobby ; he did not limit 

 himself to the purely "descriptive," but tried to 

 advance his knowledge of surgical and pathological 

 anatomy. During 1832-3 he made plaster-of-Paris 

 casts of his dissections, to the surprise of his fellow- 

 students, who had never heard of such a way of ren- 

 dering dissections permanent and instructive. After 

 some experience, he tried to imitate the models of 

 ulcers and other lesions in the College of Surgeons, 

 done by Sir C. Bell, who stood unrivalled in the 

 art, and believed he had discovered the secret from 

 experiments of his own : it was painting with coloured 

 burnt wax, or the encaustic method of the ancients. 

 He took his plaster-of-Paris cast of the ulcer, and 

 completed his work at the bedside of the patient, in 

 the wards of the Royal Infirmary. In putting up 

 preparations, in articulating skeletons, and in every 

 mode by which individual specimens of the animal 

 series could be illustrated, or morbid growths pre- 

 served, he showed surpassing care and neatness. His 

 teachers availed themselves of his work ; Knox giving 

 him a pike to form a skeleton, and other teachers 

 moil )id specimens to preserve. He was studiously 

 nice in his mode of operating, and learned to do 

 everything for himself: he laid down a principle 



